Good luck with your new gig. Nice truck and trailer too. All CDL drivers are on ELD's now, correct? I hauled cars for Allied Systems for a couple of years back in the mid 90's. Didn't run over the road much but still had to keep those aggravating paper logs. That's some interesting freight you are hauling. Looks like a young man's game there. Stay safe and I hope you make lots of money out there. Beware the Lot Lizards!

 

It isn't 100% mandatory to run ELD's. Some trucks aren't able to, older ones. I would say the majority of companies are on ELD's today, though. We are required to paper log if our ELD bonks. So we have both, but only if the electronic one screws up do we have to paper log (I have not had that happen yet, but I did run in to some issues with the computer in one of the trucks I drove in training that were almost cause for going to paper).

I hauled cars around 2006 or so - F350 DRW with a 2 car gooeneck. I was all over the eastern half of the US. It was under 26,000lbs so I didn't have a CDL. Long story short, the guy that drove before me was a retired over-the-road driver that had a CDL and knew all the regs. When he left the car gig the company didn't know how to manage or run it. I basically jumped in the seat and between myself and another one of our guys we learned by DOT fines and out-of-service orders. Once we were on the paper logs things were a bit easier. That was a neat job. It was like riding a bike - everything was the same all the time.

What I'm doing now is cause for a lot of head scratching. I spent 7hrs on that aluminum coil run. Part of it was the tarps. The coils are too tall for conventional steel tarps - the sides won't seal the bottom. I already had one up and over so I tried to rotate them 90deg so they were on sideways. I had the length to seal the sides so I ran with it and threw another steel tarp on sideways for the second coil. Getting it secured was a nightmare - the tie out points weren't in the right places now, but I screwed with it and made it work. Tarps are important in some cases, yes, but making sure the load is secure and I'm comfortable with how is imperative.